


Opposites Attract

by Vai_Fate



Series: Gaelen and Viren Anthology [1]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Fight Scenes, Izzet, M/M, Slight fluff, Spark Ignition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-20 02:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18983035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vai_Fate/pseuds/Vai_Fate
Summary: Gaelen Korda is a talented Izzet chemister with a passion for weirds. In classic Izzet fashion, an experiment gets out of hand and nearly kills Gaelen. His planeswalker spark ignited, shooting him across the Blind Eternities to an alien world and into the life of a stranger.





	1. Just an Average (Izzet) Day

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first story in a collection of stories about my fanwalkers, Gaelen and Viren.

“Another canister failed? That’s the third one this week. What the hell are you doing to them?”

“Something important,” Gaelen muttered. The shopkeeper was right. He had already broken seven mizzium canisters this week. He quickly burned through his stock and had to start buying new ones.

“Well thanks for the buisness anyways,” the goblin shopkeeper joked. “I don’t care what you do with ‘em anywys. As long as you’ve got the coin, have at it.”

Gaelen smiled wryly and handed over his cash. The goblin snatched the coins up and gave them a quick look. He nodded and went into a room behind the stand and returned a couple seconds later with another mizzium canister, identical to the ones Gaelen had already broken.

__

_Maybe it’ll work this time,_ Gaelen thought to himself as he left the marketplace. He strolled back to the Izzet guildhall Nivix and made his way through the winding hallways to his laboratory. The desks were covered with blueprints of his current project, the Mobile Weird Deployment Apparatus, or MWDA for short. He would have to work on that acronym. It was supposed to be a small but powerful device that could be worn on a person and would allow the user to make and deploy weirds at any time. Being able to create powerful elementals on the go would be groundbreaking and useful to somebody.

At the moment, however, Gaelen has having difficulty getting enough mana supplied to the system. Weirds required a significant amount of mana to create, and that was the major issue with the device. It needed a lot of mana to be convenient, but storing a large amount of mana in a fashion where it could be held on a person was difficult. So far, he had been trying to modify mizzium canisters so that they could hold mana at higher densities. Each time he tried, the results were better and better.

He couldn’t keep breaking and replacing canisters forever. Eventually he would run out of funds and have to abandon the project with his pride wounded. Hopefully, he would get to a satisfactory result soon.

Gaelen got to work on the canister. He spent around thirty minutes adding reinforcements to points before he had finished. Then he attached it to a mana outlet on the wall of the lab and began filling it. He had modified the mana outlet with a compressor for this project. He needed higher pressure than normal to fill his canisters up to the desired density. That had taken weeks and weeks of wading through paperwork from the Azorius to even get approved for that.

_What was the deal with that?_ He thought. _They should stay in their own lane. They don’t understand the experimental process._

Anyway, that was in the past. This time, it would work.

He flipped the lever next to the mana outlet and the pump began to whir. He checked the readout carefully for any abnormalities. He crossed his fingers. The pressure dial slowly inched up and up. It got passed where the last canister failed. It kept on going.

Gaelen held his breath.

It stopped right in target.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He did it.

_I did it!_

Gaelen could barely contain his excitement. He did a little dance where he was standing and resisted the urge to shout in victory. Once he had finished, he detached the canister from the outlet and set it inside a small blast chamber he had designed for this. Not one to celebrate prematurely, he had to be sure the canister was stable for long periods of time. He sealed up the blast chamber and recorded his observations in his log book. Now was the worst part of the experiment. The waiting.

Waiting was the worst part of anything. Just sitting around and waiting for things to happen drove him absolutely insane. He had to be doing something, anything!

Gaelen barely managed to leave the lab for the night. He was so excited to come back the next day to see if the canister had survived. He was grinning from ear to ear as he speed-walked to his apartment not far from Nivix. He felt like a kid the morning before the Guildpact festival. Sleep was the last thing he wasnted to do, but he eventually drifted off.

As soon as the sun shone into his room, he jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes, and bolted out of the apartment to the street. He ran like a madman across the cobblestones and across two bridges and eventually arrived at the gates of Nivix. With nothing but the canister on his mind, and raced down the dark hallways and sprinted into his lab. Quickly, he threw open the door of the blast chamber to reveal the intact canister. He snatched it up and went to measure the pressure inside. It had held perfectly.

This time, he actually did shout with excitement.

Giddily, he strapped the canister onto the harness he had constructed and attached the mana tubes to it. He threw it on and adjusted the dials on the control component, which was worn like a sleeve on his left forearm, and had a fingerless glove at the end. As he adjusted the settings to make one of his famous weirds, he looked fondly at the tiny Niv Mizzet tattooed on the back of his right hand at the end of the sleeve of runes and circles that covered the arm. Surely, the Firemind would take notice of this project and promote him. His dream would come true.

Everthing was ready. Gaelen had been waiting his whole life for this to happen. He was ready to fulfill his destiny. He reached outwards with his left arm and pointed the nozzle of the apparatus in front of him. He closed his eyes, said a short prayer of sorts to Niv, and pressed the button on the side of the device’s glove. A large blob of mana shot out of the nozzle and coagulated into a large cloud-like weird midair.

It was beautiful.

The weird turned around to face Gaelen. Well, this one didn’t have a face, but he knew weirds well enough to know what it was doing.

It seemed to examine him for a couple seconds.

Then it turned back around and made its way across the lab to the mana outlet.

Too late, Gaelen realized what was happening.

The weird touched the pump on the mana outlet, and it overloaded. Too much magical energy all at once caused it to fail spectacularly. The beautiful device melted into a heap of slag on the floor, and pure mana began to pour out of the outlet. 

Almost immediately, the weird was ignited by the mana, and a pulse of deadly magical energy flew out of it.  


Gaelen didn’t have the time to save himself. It all happened in less than two seconds. He was going to die in the most Izzet fashion possible: catastrophic equipment failure.

_Well,_ he thought, _I had a good run. It was fun while it lasted._

If only I had more time.

The multiverse granted him what would have been his dying wish.

Deep in the recesses of his being, deep down at the core of his soul, a flame ignited, burning a brilliant red and blue. His body disassembled and was whisked across the Blind Eternities before the unstoppable tide of destruction he had created would be able to destroy him.

At the time of their sparking most planeswalkers feel surprise, bewilderment, and most of all, abject terror at the feeling of their body coming apart at a molecular level.

Gaelen was feeling none of that. He was expecting his body to vaporize on impact with the energy pulse after all. He thought that he had died in his own experiment, and some Orzhov asshole would come along afterwards claim his servitude for some debt he owed that he didn’t even know about.

The real surprise came when his body stitched itself back together. He popped back into existence in a forest of some sort, at twilight. He wasn’t a ghost after all. He was alive and not in his lab anymore. His clothes were slightly singed in some places, but otherwise completely unharmed. The MWDA was intact, and he could tell that there was still mana in the canister. Then he wiggled his toes and fingers to check if they worked, and blinked a few times.

Then he realized that somebody was pinning him to the ground and holding a knife to his throat.


	2. Knife-Point Diplomacy

Gaelen cleared his throat loudly, then opened his mouth to speak.

His captor cut him off, “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t kill you.”

Gaelen closed his mouth and blinked.

“Well?” The man demanded.

Gaelen was still not sure the hell was going on. He was still disoriented after whatever it was that just happened to him, and didn’t have the faintest clue as to what he was supposed to say to this person keeping him down.

“Time’s up,” the man said.

“Where am I?” Gaelen blurted out.

The man stopped preparing to kill him and tilted his head to the side a bit.

“Don’t try to play dumb with me, you know exactly where you are.”

“Funnily enough, I actually don’t,” Gaelen half-laughed. Then he noticed that the man pinning him to the ground was decidedly _not_ Ravnican.

“Okay, death it is,” the non-Ravnican said with a smile.

Gaelen instinctively tried to raise his hands up above his head in a gesture of peace. Instead he just pushed against his captor’s hands slightly. “Wait, I can explain,” he said desperately.

In truth, he couldn’t explain shit. Well, not yet at least.

The gears in Gaelen’s head had been spinning out of control since his body pieced itself back together, but he didn’t have the time to properly process it all. The pieces were there, he just hadn’t assembled the puzzle yet.

He at least had the time to properly examine the appearance of the person holding him to the ground, and boy was he interesting.

He was an elf, from the looks of it. He had the sharp, vertical face that elves from Ravnica had. The pointy ears were there too, as well as the pale skin. He looked slightly regal, as if he was better than everybody else.

The interesting stuff was everything else. His eyes were pure black, no iris or pupil, just a solid obsidian sclera. Around his browbone, just above and slightly behind his eyes sprouted a pair of ram-like horns that curved up in a spiral. His right horn was broken off about halfway through the spiral.

Elves like these did not exist in Ravnica at all. That part gnawed at Gaelen’s mind intently. 

Gaelen had to improvise while he thought. “As you can probably tell, I’m not from around here.”

The elf continued to stare.

Gaelen swallowed hard and continued, “Firstly, I don’t want to kill you at all. Secondly, I want to get as far away from here as possible. Home, preferably. Thirdly, what would you gain from killing me? I’m nobody. I don’t have any weapons on me, so I’m not a threat.”

The elf relaxed him grip on Gaelen’s wrists ever so slightly. Gaelen noticed that the elf had a sleeve of leafy patterns covering his right arm in dark blue ink.

“What if you’re lying?” the elf responded coldly.

Gaelen paused for a second. “You’d be dead?” He suggested.

The elf thought it over for a moment or two.

“Then what’s your use to me?”

“Uhhhhh.....” Gaelen was blanking. “Friendship?”

The elf froze for a second, genuinely surprised, and then laughed. It was loud, deep, and unrestrained. This wasn’t a fake laugh.

“What did I say?”

“You want to be friends with me? Clearly, you don’t know anything at all.” The elf laughed again, more to himself this time. “Alright. What the hell. On one condition, however.”

“What is it?”

“Explain how you managed to teleport.”

“I can travel between worlds.” It was a shot in the dark. Gaelen had only heard rumors of other worlds existing beyond Ravnica. It was purely theoretical, however. There wasn’t much evidence for it, but it was a seriously considered theory among the Izmundi. Gaelen wasn’t an Izmundi himself, but whispers make it out every once in a while. It did explain the constant disappearance of Jace Beleren, the Living Guildpact.

It also explained what had just happened to Gaelen.

He had nearly died and then somehow escaped the blast and teleported to an unknown location with new species never before seen on Ravnica. Also, he was in a forest. Those were pretty rare on Ravnica. Even the trees seemed to be of a different species. Somehow he had made it to a different world.

“Now that’s a new one,” his new friend, or at least hopefully his new friend, remarked with an eyebrow raised.

“New to me too, handsome,” Gaelen quipped without missing a beat.

_Shit, am I already hitting on this guy?_

The elf laughed again. Gaelen’s face heated up a bit.

“Well, if you’re gonna stick around with me for a while, you’ll need to make yourself useful. What can you do.”

Gaelen got really excited. He got to talk to somebody about his favorite thing: weirds. Gaelen launched into the dramatic explanation of his passions that he definitely had never rehearsed in his head when he was bored.

“You know what elementals are right? They’re animated golems of some kind of natural element that mages can construct.”

“You’re an elemntalist?” The elf remarked, slightly impressed.

“Well, yes and no. The elementals I make are called weirds. They’re made of opposing elements. Ice and fire, Earth and air, that kind of thing. They’re generally more unstable, but what’s important is that they’re more fun! I made this cool device that lets me make weirds any time I want!” Gaelen thrust out his left arm and pointed to the device attached to it with his right hand.

The elf raised his eyebrows. Clearly, he was not impressed.

“Now, watch this,” Gaelen said dramatically. He fiddled with the dials on the control device and pressed the activation button. A blob of mana shot out from the nozzle and landed on the ground with a wet slap.

The elf laughed again. “Nice going there,” he said, trying not to smile.

Gaelen sighed. “Just wait a second.”

As if on cue, the blob of mana rose up into the air and took on a large vaguely human form. Chunks of rock from the ground were torn up by an invisible magical force and flew around the blob until a fully formed weird


	3. Longing

It had been seven months since Gaelen and Viren first met. The two of them had settled into a daily routine.Viren would occasionally hunt for fresh meat when it was needed, and Gaelen would prepare meals. Every once in a while, an especially nasty actor would appear, such as a flamekin. Gaelen’s weirds could usually convince their visitors to leave them alone, but Viren could easily deal with serious threats.

Things were going just fine for the now extremely close friends. Gaelen frequently teased Viren about pretty much anything insignificant. Gaelen was really good at getting him to laugh at his jokes. He loved hearing Viren laugh.

Viren loved listening to Gaelen talk about Ravnica. Every night, the two would pick a tree to sleep in and exchange stories. Occasionally, Gaelen would convince him to tell him stories of Lorwyn. The majority of nights, however, Gaelen recounted stories of his life on Ravnica. The myth of the signing of the Guildpact, the return of the Nephilim, the Implcit Maze, Jace, the Living Guildpact - everything he could think to tell Viren about. He described each guild in detail. Every time Gaelen talked about the Izzet League, Viren could sense the longing in his voice. Gaelen wanted to be home, to be in his laboratory, and to have some fun messing with dials. He loved listening to him talk about how he wanted to be an Izmundi, how he wanted to make a name for himself as a genius among even the ranks of the Izzet. Viren believed he could do it; he saw the intelligence behind Gaelen’s eyes, and the burning passion in his heart. Gaelen had already found his place.

Viren used to not know if he could ever find a place for himself.

He used to be respected among the Gilt Leaf. He used to be a renown Winnower, an assasin of the eyeblights, among his people. Everything changed one day when a part of his horn broke off on an assassination job. The target was harder to take down than he thought it would be, and he was caught off guard. He couldn’t dodge the sword strike, and the ivory atop his head broke. Enraged, he destroyed his target. It wouldn’t bring back the horn piece that broke off.

Suddenly, Viren of the Gilt Leaf was just Viren. Even worse, he was an eyeblight, the scum of the earth he had trained to hunt down with ruthless efficiency. He wasn’t perfect anymore. Imperfections were not allowed. His fellow Winnowers turned on him, and he fled. He had killed at least two of his closest friends then in order to escape. He had nowhere to go, no one to get help from. The other races would never accept him among their ranks; he was an Elf, and Elves were meant to be feared.

Suddenly, Viren had stumbled upon a new niche to fill. He had found his place, and it was with Gaelen. He met someone who didn’t know anything about his past or the rules of Lorwyn. Viren had even almost killed him when they first met, and Gaelen didn’t care. It didn’t matter to Gaelen that he was an eyeblight.

Gaelen didn’t care about all that. He accepted Viren as just him, the Elf in need, and helped him. Gaelen didn’t expect anything in return besides company.

It was all Viren could have ever wanted, and then some.

One clear night with no moon, Viren and Gaelen rested at the top of the canopy in the forest. They looked up at the sky together. Gaelen was transfixed. The light of Ravnica wouldn’t let him see the stars, but on Lorwyn, there was no light to obscure the,. It was like nothing he had seen before: an expanse of distant swirling lights and constellations. It was beautiful. He wished he could stay on Lorwyn forever, but in his heart, he knew that he would need to go home some day. At any time, he could go home and continue his research and pursue his dreams to become an Izmundi, but then he would have to leave behind Viren and Lorwyn. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to leave his friend behind, alone and vulnerable. Gaelen had asked for more time, and the Multiverse had given him that gift. He didn’t want to throw it away. The bittersweet feeling never left him.

Viren asked for more stories of Ravnica, and Gaelen launched into a description of the Simic Combine. He told Viren of the weird new creatures being made by the Simic every day, and had to stop to explain what each creature used in the chimeras was. Viren laughed at the mental image Gaelen had constructed for him of sharktocrabs, a staple chimera of the Combine.

“I wish I could go to Ravnica,” Viren sighed after the story ended.

“I wish you could go there too.”

A heavy silence fell between the two partners in crime.

“You said you didn’t know you were a planeswlaker before you arrived here, right?” Viren asked.

“Yeah, it just happened on its own. I would have died if I wasn’t a planeswalker,” Gaelen mused.

“Then, what if I’m a planeswalker?”

Gaelen frowned. “I guess there’s no way to tell.”

“Well, if I turn out to be a planeswalker, the first place I go will be Ravnica, that’s for sure.”

Gaelen smiled sadly.

All he could do was hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was shorter since I wanted to overview their relationship during this time, so it wouldn’t fit in with the next chapter very well in terms of tone.


	4. Haunted by the Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter covers the graphic depictions of violence tag

Gaelen and Viren were both perched in a tree high above the ground. The canopy had proven to be a consistent hiding spot for the two partners in crime. Down on the forest floor, four elves that looked similar to Viren had set up camp. Viren was listening to them intently from his perch.

“You think we’ve finally found him?” one of them asked his compatriots.

“It’s possible,” another replied. “There aren’t any others like him on the run. If there’s been sightings of an elf out here and we didn’t send them, it had to have been him.”

“Well we know it’s him, but can we even take him out? Remember what he did to Malareth and Lanas?” a third elf interjected.

“A fight of one elf without support against four out for blood isn’t going to go his way,” the fourth scoffed. “There’s no way he survives this.”

Viren looked up to Gaelen. Gaelen saw the fear in his eyes. He wished he could reassure his elven friend, but it didn’t look good. They would have to take the fight on their own terms or they would certainly die. It was now or never.

Gaelen felt his mana tank on his back. He hadn’t had the opportunity to refill since he arrived on Lorwyn, and he had enough for a weird or two before it was empty. Viren had all eight of his knives, but they hadn’t been sharpened in a while. This was going to be difficult.

Gaelen looked back to Viren, then pointed to the elves on the forest floor below.

Viren nodded.

Gaelen held up two fingers while pointing to his canister, and Viren nodded again. Silently, the elf unsheathed two knives from their place on his legs. He looked to the elves below, and chose his targets. He pointed to the two closest to his tree, and then to himself. His partner nodded, and then started to carefully adjust the dials on his device to the desired setting. A quick detonating weird of ice and fire would do the trick to take one out.

The two friends looked at each other, and gave a thumbs up. Then Viren held up his right hand and counted down on his fingers.

Five. Viren adjusted his grip on his left knife.

Four. Gaelen held his left thumb over the button on the glove in anticipation.

Three. He held out his left arm and pointed it to the elf furthest away from him.

Two. Viren shifted his weight on the branch he crouched in.

One. Silence.

Click. Whoosh.

A sphere of bright red mana shot out from the device on Gelen’s hand and smacked into an elf with a wet thwap.

“What the hell!?” She cried.

Viren fell out of his tree and landed just behind one elf and slit their throat in the blink of an eye, then jumped to the side and stabbed both knives through the back of the one next to his bleeding comrade, then pulled them out with a sickening _shink._

By now, the orb of mana had formed into a small weird with a freezing shell of ice and fire burning inside. It hummed for a second, then exploded with a deafening blast. The elf was thrown back into a tree behind them, and bones crunched.

Three elves had already died in the space of a few breaths.

The last one had time to react though, and didn’t need weapons to fight back.

Gaelen and Viren had accidentally left the most lethal elf alive.

Unfazed, the fourth elf shot to his feet and jumped into the canopy above. Now it would be harder to find him.

Gaelen cursed under his breath. _Now what?_

Soon enough, a dark green glow started to shine in the trees around Gaelen.

“Uh, what?” He whispered to himself. Sensing danger, he jumped out of the canopy to the ground next to Viren. If they were together, they could protect each other. Immediately, Viren and Gaelen stood back-to-back and held their weapons in front of themselves.

A voice called out from the glowing leaves above them, “Remember me Viren?”

Viren groaned, then shouted back, “Leave us, Shul, and we won’t kill you!”

“Your death is not up for debate, eyeblight. Your appearance is sacrelige to the Gilt Leaf. Even worse, you’ve allied yourself with this _thing.”_

Shul’s contemptuous tone towards Gaelen made Viren furious. “What right do you have to impose your law on us?” He cried.

Shul laughed cruelly. “You know our hunts are on the authority of Lorwyn itself better than anybody. How many eyeblights did you kill back in your day? Fifty? Seventy?”

Viren scowled, but Gaelen spoke up before he could. “Who cares what you think Lorwyn wants? Fuck that. Nobody has that kind of authority, especially assholes like you.”

“No lesser being insults the Gilt Leaf and lives.” Shul shot back with an ice-cold hiss.

The green glow of Shul’s magic condensed into one spot, revealing the location of the elven sorcerer.

Viren recognized the spell instantly. He threw Gaelen to the ground to protect him and took the full force of the spell himself. Tendrils of thorns and leaves shot out of Shul’s extended palm and collided with Viren in the blink of an eye.

Gaelen screamed in agony as his friend was wrapped in nettlevines. Soon, Viren would be an arboreal thrall of Shul’s controlled by the nettlevines that covered his body. Instead, the second miracle Gaelen ever experienced occurred.

Before Viren could be covered completely, he screamed in rage. With the last ounce of his strength, he pulled a knife from its scabbard over his right shoulder and threw it at Shul. The mage didn’t have the time to react and the knife embedded itself in his chest. Viren had thrown it perfectly, and Shul’s heart stopped in an instant.

Viren was still covered in nettlevines, and even though Shul had died, the spell was proceeding. Within seconds, the elf’s body was covered completely in the spiny plant.

Gaelen scrambled to his feet and started to pull at the vines. They held firm. With tears in his eyes, he readjusted the dials on his weird creator and shot out another fire and ice weird, but more stable this time. He commanded the elemental to freeze the vines solid, and the elf-shaped mass of thorns was quickly covered in a layer of frost. Gaelen found a rock nearby and started to smash the brittle vines. It worked, and soon he had punched a hole through the vines.

Inside was an empty cavity. Viren was gone.

Gaelen sat back, bewildered.

Where did he go?

Then it clicked.

Gaelen’s body dissolved into a cloud of embers and snowflakes.


	5. Home at Last

Gaelen’s body reformed at the entrance of Nivix. He was home, but that wasn’t what mattered to him anymore. What mattered was who was there.

Standing in the grand arch of the main building was Viren. His mismatched horns, messy ponytail, forest green cloak, and tattooed arm were all intact. There were a few nicks and scratches here and there from the nettlevines. Around his feet were long, pointed, and dark purple flower petals.

Gaelen ran to the elf and hugged him from behind. He buried his face in Viren’s shoulder and cried.

They stood there, enjoying the moment. They were both on Ravnica. They were both alive. Neither of them were in any immediate danger. They were safe. They were home.

Viren broke the silence. His voice wash shaky, but he managed to get out a few words. “Nivix looks gaudy.”

Gaelen laughed. “Shut up, its beautiful.”

“Yeah, I knew you would say that.” Viren sniffled. “Can I turn around now?”

Gaelen let go of Viren, and the elf turned around to face his human friend. It was Viren’s turn to hug Gaelen. Gaelen’s head fit comfortably under Viren’s chin. Gaelen breathed in deeply. Viren smelled like fresh flowers.

“Want to go somewhere else?” He asked, his voice muffled by Viren’s shirt.

“Yeah.”

Viren let go, and Gaelen grabbed his hand. “I wanna show you the Tenth District.”

Viren allowed the short human to drag him away from Nivix and into the rest of the District around them.

Gaelen finally got to show the place he loved the most to the person he loved even more. Viren got to see the whole district over the course of the whole day. He got to see the towering boughs of Vitu-Ghazi, the soaring towers of New Prahv, the stone blocks of Sunhome, the glittering buttresses of Orzhova, the burning gates of Rix Maadi, and the deep pool of Zonot Seven. It was all even better than he could have ever imagined. He thought that Gaelen had embellished his stories of Ravnica, but the opposite was true; no words could do the city justice. 

As the sun began to set, the two had found themselves near the Chambers of the Guildpact at the center of the District. Gaelen dragged Viren to one of his favorite restaurants nearby and they sat down at a table for two outside.

“So what do you think?” Gaelen asked as soon as the waiter got their orders.

“I - It’s incredible! I never imagined it would be like this.”

“I never dared to dream that you could be here with me.” Gaelen looked down at his hands, “but here we are. On Ravnica...”

“Together,” Viren added.

“Yes.” Gaelen looked up into Viren’s eyes. “Can you stay here? With me?”

“Of course.” Viren smiled. “Why would I ever want to leave?”

They held hands under the table until their food arrived. Viren had never had Ravnican food before and he couldn’t stop himself from stealing off of Gaelen’s plate.

Nobody stared at them. Nobody whispered to each other about the strange men eating dinner together. Nobody gripped any concealed weapons out of fear, wondering if the elf would kill them for being an eyeblight. Nobody gawked at the Izzet chemister’s strange clothes and weird contraptions he wore. Nothing could possibly faze the citizens of Ravnica. They saw stranger things five times a day. The two of them could simply exist in the city, and they wouldn’t be questioned for it. Ravnicans had better things to do than bother each other.

Viren had never felt so at ease in his entire life.

Gaelen had never been so happy to eat dinner with somebody before. 

They finished their meal, and then Gaelen remembered that he didn’t have an cash on him. He had the waiter out it on his tab. The waiter rolled his eyes but did it anyways. Then, they walked through the streets of Ravnica at night, hand in hand.

They strolled in silence through alleyways and wide streets alike. The stepped through and around puddles, dodged a barstool flying through a doorway, and turned away a mugger with a display of Viren’s knives. It was all so pedestrian compared to the last eight months they spend together in the forests of Lorwyn. 

Gaelen finally got up the courage to say something he had been meaning to say for a long time. He cleared his throat. “Viren,” he said, “I have something important to say.”

Viren turned around and let go of Gaelen’s hand. “What is it?” he asked, slightly concerned.

Gaelen rubbed the back of his neck anxiously. “Well, uh, we spent so long together on Lorwyn,” he paused, still unsure of himself, “that we’ve gotten really close. And, um, we just...” 

Gaelen stood awkwardly and stared at his feet for a second.

“And?” Viren prompted.

Gaelen exhaled shakily. “I...I love you.”

Viren laughed.

Gaelen’s face went bright red. “What?” Viren was still laughing.

He managed to stop laughing after a few seconds and then spoke: “Let me recap the day so far. First, we arrive on Ravnica after we almost die together, then we hug and cry in front of Nivix for a couple minutes, then you take me on a tour of your city while we’re holding hands, eat dinner together, and go for a walk together at night with no clear destination.”

Gaelen was confused. “And?”

Viren sighed amusedly. “I love you too, dumbass. I thought that was really obvious.”

“Oh.” Gaelen’s face was bright red. “Then, do you, um, want to go to my apartment for the night?”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

“Thanks, I guess?”

“For someone so smart you really can be quite dense,” Viren joked.

Gaelen blushed harder. “Well my apartment is...” he spun around to figure out what direction to go, “that way.”

“Lead the way, oh wise one.”

“If you keep that up, you’re sleeping on the floor,” Gaelen called behind him as he walked off.

Viren jogged to catch up with him. “No I’m not,” he said, poking Gaelen in the side.

No, you’re not, Gaelen thought to himself. He reached for Viren’s hand and they laced their fingers together as they walked off into the night, this time with a destination.

They arrived at the doorstep of Gaelen’s apartment when he realized that he didn’t have the key anymore.

“I must have lost it on Lorwyn somewhere,” he groaned.

Viren gently pushed Gaelen out of the way. “I’ve got this.” He pulled out one of his knives and stuck it into the keyhole. He opened his palm and created a small but sturdy wooden needle from magic. “Every elf can perform some very basic spells he explained,” as he got to work picking the lock. After some scratching and light cursing, a hollow click sounded out and the door came loose

“Where’d you learn to pick locks though?”

Viren shrugged. “Assassin skills,” he replied. He wiggled his eyebrows at his boyfriend. “I’m quite handy if I do say so myself.”

Gaelen groaned and rolled his eyes. “I may be dumb, but that was some awful flirting,” he said, “and I’m exhausted anyways. Let’s just get some rest.”

“Alright fine, but tomorrow...” he suggested.

“We’ll see about that.”

Viren took a step into their apartment and was greeted by the bare entryway. “You need some decorations here,” he remarked.

“Well seeing as how I spent all of my time in the lab, I didn’t need much here.”

“That’s a terrible excuse and you know that,” Viren replied with a quick poke.

“By the Guildpact I’ll kick you to curb this instant.”

“Okay, okay, don’t kill the messenger,” he said as he inspected each room. There was a barebones kitchen with just a sink, icebox, stove, table, and a few chairs that looked like they hadn’t been used in, well, months. There was also a sitting room, an empty room, and a bedroom/work room that had a small bed and desks covered in blueprints, research notes, and old food. “Damn, you live like this?” Viren teased.

Gaelen coughed as a cloud of dust billowed up from a pile of papers he pushed out of the way. “Look’s like we’ll have to do some cleaning before bed then.”

“Okay, but you really owe me something good for this.”

“This is your part of the rent, actually, so I don’t owe you,” Gaelen replied matter-of-factly. 

“Oh, so you’re gonna pull that card are you? Let me see, how much was all that game I hunted for us on Lorwyn worth..?” Viren started miming counting on his fingers.

“Fiiiiiiiine.”

The two of them got to work cleaning the bedroom. Gaelen mostly organized the papers strewn about the room and out them in neat piles in the spare room. The tables were moved to the spare room too, and the floor was swept. The shelves were rearranged, trash was thrown away, and the sheets were shaken out.

“Look at us, already domestic and everything,” Gaelen remarked when they were finished.

“Never thought I would be cleaning out somebody else’s house without the threat of violence.”

They both yawned loudly. They wordlessly started to undo buckles and hang up their clothes in the recently re-organized closet. Gaelen’s bed was small, but they both fit in it just fine. After spending eight whole months sleeping in trees, on the forest floor, or in bushes, they finally had a real bed to rest in, and together this time. Viren’s legs were so long that his toes poked out of the bottom of the sheets but he didn’t mind. Gaelen curled up at his side and rested his head on Viren’s chest. Absolutely exhausted by the day’s events, they quickly drifted off.


End file.
